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SimCity Imposes Congestion Pricing

Game developer Electronics Arts has implemented congestion pricing for playing the newly-released version of its popular city-building game SimCity.

After its servers were overwhelmed by gamers trying to play the 2013 version of SimCity, Electronic Arts (EA) has adopted congestion pricing which will impose a surcharge on gamers playing the game during peak demand.

The latest version of SimCity has been re-imagined as a massively multi-player online game (MMO) that is "Always-Connected" and requires users remain logged in to SimCity's servers during game play. After launching on March 5th, gamers reported long waits to play the new game and complained that it was slow and often crashed. Many fans of the game are also outraged that there is no "offline" mode.

At a press conference today announcing the new surcharge scheme, EA spokesperson Mark Etting said, "While we recognize that thousands of SimCity fans love the original game, we have heard from tens of gamers who love the new multi-player always-connected functionality. These new gamers are going to love the congestion pricing as our servers will be not be overwhelmed during peak demand."